David Taylor ~ Working the Line

Detention Cell 3 (with Serape), NM, 2007.
Photograph © David Taylor.

Border Monument # 184, 2010. Photograph © David Taylor.

US/Mexico Border Near El Paso/Juarez, 2007.
Photograph © David Taylor.

Borders are simultaneously historical, geographical, political, cultural in complex and arbitrary ways. That much is a truism. These three images are from a new book Working the Line by photographer David Taylor. The border monument is one among nearly 300, erected in the late 19th Century, that Taylor has photographed. Taylor lives and teaches in Las Cruces, New Mexico but has photographed the border from Texas through California. This is good work.

Another great new book on FDR's New Deal

Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor.

Here's my blurb: "This intimate portrait of the Writers' Project, a gem of FDR's New Deal, is a nostalgic journey through America in the Depression Era. Familiar faces dot every corner, young writers from Studs Terkel to Richard Wright, John Cheever to Ralph Ellison. It's a journey well worth taking, a key formative moment in our literary common culture, well written and nicely researched."

Books I've Blurbed

Check out these recent titles, now in bookstores, that I had the pleasure to write advance blurbs for (which means, obviously, I liked them):

The Canary Sang but Couldn't Fly: The Fatal Fall of Abe Reles, the Mobster Who Shattered Murder, Inc.'s Code of Silence by Edmunh Elmaleh

My blurb: “Elmaleh has brought fresh energy, a fresh point of view, and a flair for original research to this story, tracing its conspiracies in the best tradition of life mimicking film noir. This blank spot in New York’s underworld history deserves to be filled, and Elmaleh fills it."

The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family  by Charles Lachman

My blurb: "[An] intimate portrait of decline. Throughout, the contrast between the great President and his descendants—living lives of little social impact or public purpose—is crystal clear."

The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, by Roy Morris, Jr.

My Blurb: "[A] key addition to out understanding of antebellum America -- the forces driving the nation to th brink -- and a fine human drama."

Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor
   My blurb: "This intimate portrait of the Writers' Project, a gem of FDR's New Deal, is a nostalgic journey through America in the Depression Era. Familiar faces dot every corner, young writers from Studs Terkel to Richard Wright, John Cheever to Ralph Ellison. It's a journey well worth taking, a key formative moment in our literary common culture, well written and nicely researched."